Jon’s Letter To Sansa Foreshadows Problems Between The Starks In ‘Game Of Thrones’ Season 8

Now that we know Sansa was working with Arya and Bran to expose Littlefinger as the cockroach that he is (well, was) during Game of Thrones season seven, it’s time to start worrying about how the Lady of Winterfell will react to the traveling semi-Stark next season. Jon Snow/Aejon and Sansa care for and respect each other, but they both believe they’re the right person to lead the North. This tension could prove, let’s say, uncomfortable, especially now that Jon is hooking up Aunt Daenerys and, oh yeah, he’s also working with Cersei Lannister, the woman who kept Sansa hostage in King’s Landing.

Sansa and Jon were already not on the best of terms. The scroll she reads from in “The Dragon and the Wolf” (we don’t see it in the episode, but HBO released the prop on a behind-the-scenes website) won’t help things.

Sansa,

Cersei Lannister has pledged her forces to our cause, as has Daenerys Targaryen. And if we survive this war, I have pledged our forces to Daenerys at the rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. We are both coming to organise the defence of the realm.

An army of 100,000 zombies is marching on Winterfell, but I’m sure Sansa will take the opportunity to engage in a petty power struggle with Jon Snow over the fact that she wasn’t consulted first before Jon made a necessary sacrifice to secure an alliance that will save the North from total annihilation.

All last offseason, you guys wanted to drum up this imaginary tension between Jon and Sansa. They might disagree at times, but Sansa has never shown any real interest in usurping him. Littlefinger tried to get her to. Arya suspected her of it but basically told her “you better not.” It would be a real dumb leap in story if suddenly next year, after this big theme of wolves running together and Arya emphasizing family over everything, and Sansa finally seeing the light at the end of the season, for her to reverse course and suddenly start squabbling with Jon all over again.

Sansa doesn’t have to move to usurp Jon for this to be a problem. The Northern lords will likely rebel against bending the knee to a Targaryen. Jon said as much to Daenarys this season on multiple occasions. They may move to shift their support behind Sansa whether she even wants that or not. The red herring here is that Daenarys is going to struggle with Jon being a Targaryen when the real trouble will be keeping the North united when they find out their King is a trueborn son of a hated rival, Southern family. The family that, by the way, murdered Ned’s father and brother. The North remembers…

I’m curious to see how the northern houses react. Will they treat him like all of a sudden he’s not really a Stark? Or was his whole “You’re a Stark because my father raised you” speech to Theon to set up their acceptance of him because he was raised with their ideals?

I think the show in years past would have depicted the Northern bannermen in this situation as the stubborn, petty rubes they often are. (Worth remembering: they backed the Boltons; many to their death). The old show would have let that drama play itself out over ten episodes. The new show will probably have someone make a mushy speech about how Jon is still a Stark, a true Northerner at heart, blah blah blah or just ignore it altogether. I don’t trust Benioff & Weiss with nuance any longer.

Maybe it’s just me but I never got the feeling that Jon liked being king. He was sort of the accidental king and he kept playing the role because the north needed someone to lead to get things accomplished. He didn’t have a problem ceding the north to Sansa while he went away. I don’t see him fighting Dany for power either. He didn’t bend the knee because of the implication, not because he had any desire for power. His goal is fighting the Night’s King, not trying to wear the crown

I know he’s a Stark. You know he’s a Stark. I’m not sure the mysoginist, patriarchal Westerosi see him that way though. You notice no one hyphenates their name in Westeros and everyone makes a VERY big deal about who has what name and who gets to use it. Hence the whole Snow/Sand etc bastard naming conventions. they should care but that doesn’t mean they won’t